"After throwing around that piece of shit sound bite about "hiring known criminals" the same customer goes out into the parking lot and smokes a joint."
You're missing two important points here.
1) The connection between the crime in question and the job in question. You're hiring a convicted criminal computer hacker to work as a computer security professional! Would I hire someone with a 'pot posession' record to work as a computer geek? Sure. Would I hire them to be on the drug squad? No! Would I hire a reformed hacker to work on the drug squad? Quite possibly. If they have a criminal record that directly ties to the work in question, then they're probably not the best person to hire. Remember that hiring is bringing on (1)a set of skills, (2)a personality, and (3)a degree of liability. If the liability is too high, or the personality is a terrible fit, it doesn't much matter how good the skillset is.
Secondly, it's the employer's choice, within the confines of the law. If they decide to limit their liability at the risk of potentially limiting their skillset, that's their choice. If they want to have the best skills in the known universe, and hiring people with a directly relevant police record is how they do it, then the increased liability risk is also their choice.
Hmm. Interesting. I can appreciate the call to arms then--if Taylor is misrepresenting the community, then the community can rise up and pull him down.
However, that's not what Bruce has done here--he's trying to take this guy out by himself, because he (bruce) is a "better" leader. There should be no better or worse leaders in an anarchic system--only ones that the people do or don't accept.
Or in other words, Bruce is the pot, Taylor is the kettle.
Also, there's a problem with ANY form of political freedom which is more evident in anarchy--people are easily swayed by things other than facts. Bruce is working hard at using that to his advantage as a rallying cry.
I've read a lot of comments here, with some interesting points, excuses, or disagreements on the premise that OSS doesn't support standards.
Bash supposedly conforms to Posix standards if you invoke it with the --posix flag. (Why it shouldn't default to posix-compliant I don't know) However, bash is not compatible with/bin/sh. WHY???!!!!
Will someone tell me why bash is the ONLY/bin/sh-like shell that I can't `echo "hi!"` in????
In case anyone things I'm just ranting (I probably am ranting, but that's not all there is here:-), consider my question closely. sh, ksh, zsh, ash, and every other shell that uses sh syntax (i.e. not the csh variants) deals with the above statement in the same way. Bash doesn't.
Why would OSS deliberately develop a shell (the default universal Linux shell no less) that breaks such a fundamental and long-standing de facto standard?
But this is silly. We teach people how to play chess--not just the rules, but the moves, the positions, the strategies. Why is it only intelligence on a computer's part if they can figure out how to win the game without that teaching?
Well not exactly the King of Wisconsin, but someone once declared himself Emperor of the United States, (Norton I) and it stuck. Not bad for a lunatic.:-)
"Qualified," Bruce? When the very existence of OSS is anti-formalism, how do you declare someone as "qualified" or not?
I tend to agree with you--this guy is slightly wacko. That said, he has every bit as much right to claim (regardless of the legitimacy of that claim) to be a Linux representative.
Does he represent the majority's views? No, probably not.
Does he represent his own views? Apparently so.
Is there any requirement that he represent ANYONE'S views for him to declare himself a representative, spokesman, or grand high exhalted master? Nope! It's the OSS way, I'm afraid. A grey area between direct democracy and anarchy (both in the proper political sense).
I suspect you'll have to suck it up and deal with this sort of thing as it arises. When there's no qualifying process, there's no restrictions on who can declare themselves qualified.
OK, a random comment in another post got me to thinking. Keep in mind that I'm not much of a chess player, nor much up on chess programming. (but I used to play Go decently)
What if we implemented extensive sorting algorithms in a chess computer? Start by picking the two most recently moved pieces (each side's most recent, that is) and getting rid of all moves that don't pertain to that situation. Then consider the next most important pieces (perhaps looking at a three move history?) and further winnow the possible moves down to maybe a dozen or so. Then read not a thousand or ten thousand situations, but a dozen for one move, and then repeat. Maybe apply a scoring system to see if we move further ahead than behind, and toss out more situations.
We might end up with a computer that spent more of its time sorting than calculating, but only had to play through a hundred moves total in five or ten positions. This strikes me as being much closer to how humans view a game. Would we call it intelligent?
That's exactly what I was thinking as I read through it. If all of the above statements were true, then the human would be playing completely randomly (with no memory, no library of stored openings or endgames, etc.). Silliness.
The only thing that makes humans more 'intelligent' players is the long and short term sorting algorithms we've compiled in our brains. We know what routes to not bother with.
Geez, I seem to have touched a nerve. Glad to hear that a few others got hooked as well as I did.
I played two of the Gabriel Knight games, and like 'em quite well, but occasionally was frustrated with the blotches of stupidity in the story. I thought that the Tex Murphy games were more fun.
But there are two newer ones that everyone should check out: The Longest Journey (a few years old now, but fairly recent) and Syberia (quite new). Both from Europe, both less of the 'adventure' style and more of the 'interactive story.'
The world's oil and gas data (seismic, geological, geothermal) runs on Sun. Global financials? Yeah, they run on IBM. "Huge data stores?" They run on any and everything.
Besides, the truly monster mainframe world is diminishing more and more. It's going to be a while before it disappears forever (if it does--I'm not about to predict the death of the mainframe), but a company that lives exclusively in that domain and mindset is NOT a company to lead the other 95+% of the market.
Before Zork, there was Adventure and Haunted House. With no idea about what an adventure game was let alone what do do with it, My best friend, my dad, and I started typing words at random into this program we'd loaded from data cassette on the Commodore Pet we'd borrowed from the University.
A quarter century and a chemistry(?!) degree later, I'm doing sysadmin work and relearning the fun of programming that was ignited by that Pet, and by seeing just how complex computer games could be.
I've never cared about characters half as much as in that game. About once every six months, I replay the game just like rereading a favorite book. It's inspired me to go out and read up on Mexican religion and mythology.
The Tex Murphy games (Under a Killing Moon, etc.) were in the same category, although not quite so honest as GF.
1) DOOM. Nightmares after playing it for 11 hour straight, the day the shareware images were first released. The dark images, the flickering lights in the station, the SOUNDS!
2) DOOM II. Driving out of town for a holiday in the mountains, I saw a sign advertising a "Sale today on chainsaws!" Instantly I thought, "Damn, I've been looking for a chainsaw for days. Should I..." and then realised that I'd been looking for a chainsaw in the game.
3) System Shock. The updated original, on CD, with voices. Shodan was NEVER so scary! Oh man, the nights I lay awake, wired on adrenaline and fear. That changed my life, because it nearly cost me my job.
4) Grim Fandango. Never have I been so wrapped up in the characters in a game. Never. Ever. I just about cried in at least three different spots.
Correction: Sun is the second most serious threat to IBM dominance. All of the points you make are true, and in fact scaling up to the mainframe (Sun's model) may be a much more viable technological (and even business) model than scaling down from the mainframe (IBM's method). Consider that Solaris on an E15k domain is pretty much the same as Solaris on a Sparc10, which is similar to any other Unix out there. However AIX is neither similar to other Unices, nor much like OS/390. Sun has the potential to do great damage to IBM, if they survive.
HOWEVER, I still say that Sun is only the SECOND biggest threat. Who then--Microsoft? Nope.
IBM's biggest danger is IBM. They STILL believe to an unhealthy degree that they're the Only Shop In Town, and that The Market Will Follow Their Lead. They don't yet (!!!!!!) understand that the market has already just about written them off, desktops are commodity items, service in the mid- to high-end range can come from ANYWHERE, and that they'll have to be the BEST offering out there to get anyone's business.
That said, I still think that IBM is the most likely company to buy Sun. Sadly.
Just a minor nit here. Solaris is "not as stable" as *BSD according to Netcraft, by a measure of uptime.
Solaris tends to be deployed in HIGH end shops, where formal and strict change management takes place. This means scheduled patching, reboots, and controlled downtime. Ironically, proper maintenance leads to shorter uptimes on individual boxes.
Not to denigrate *BSD here--anyone who was around in the SunOS days has to have a warm spot for a pure BSD OS. Furthermore, *BSD may in fact be more stable (OpenBSD especially, I'd wager) than Solaris, but web uptime isn't the way to measure it.
First is the one that people have already pointed out: The released binary is a de facto checksum of the source code. If the code compiles to be identical to the binaries they released years ago, then the source is unchanged.
Then there's the fact that SCO did release the source code--to companies (like IBM) willing to pay for a license and sign an NDA. There are several copies of it floating around out there.
Then there's the question of honesty. It's one thing to lie to the public. It's another thing to perjure yourself (or your company) in court. I imagine SCO has signed (somehow) copies of their source code saying in effect, "this is an official copy of our trade secret code as of such-and-such a date." These are legal documents, and much as we might like to think otherwise on/., companies tend to take such things VERY seriously when they're talking to a judge.
Fundamentally, this is exactly the same as any other copyright/trade secret claim. Biotech companies rely on their researchers' signed and dated notebooks to prove their work (or prior art).
As far as your LoC idea, it's another breakable step--people are bribable, plants can get hired to destroy/alter records, etc. etc. It's an onerous step that's not going to help any honest companies, nor stop any companies truly dedicated to evil. It just causes more beaurocracy.
I have to admit, I can't claim to have watched too many episodes of Enterprise. After the first few very promising ones, it seemed to degenerate into a cowboy show--a REALLY TRITE cowboy show that took itself too seriously. It may have improved, but every time I turn it on I see a lot of the same stuff. It just doesn't hold my interest.
TNG started out Bad, in my opinion. Then it sort of came together around the second season (after they turfed Wesley and the helpless security twit). Then it fell apart completely. The reason? Too much preaching, too much self-importance. They (the writers) took themselves SOOOOOOO seriously, and we ended up with space-opera dreck.
Why can't anyone make shows that are creative? We've got ideas from 35 years ago that haven't been properly explored in a Trek-context yet. How did the prime directive come about? What sort of tension led to the different (warring or not) factions in the Trek universe? In other words, WHERE ARE THE STORIES?
Not to criticise your opinion--we don't have to agree at all--but I just don't see why the show is being written anymore.
Honestly, you're right. It's a cheap shot, and uncalled for. However, it's also a pretty common nickname for him, and definitely one of the most polite ones I know of.
Besides, what else can you call the man? My god, have you seen how many people have died in Iraq since the US invaded and took over? That's not including the 13 slaughtered today in a protest. Bush is hell-bent on world conquest and slaughter of the infidels. How can you look at him objectively and not call him a warmonger?
I have to confess--I didn't expect the US would move quite so blatantly or aggressively to recreate the middle-east as an American colony. Then again, I hadn't read the "Blueprint for a New American Century" yet. Scary shit, maynard.
I honestly believe that Blair figured he could direct and rein-in George "Warmonger" Bush a bit, and would be seen as a hero. Now he's in it up to his neck, and there's nowhere to shovel but deeper.
Nonetheless, the US government has clearly stated that its goal is to implement regime change in the middle-east as a means of extending their sphere of influence. They aren't even pretending to "liberate" anyone, except when talking to the press (which in the US at least, seems to lap it up uncritically). The rest of the world sees just how hypocritical it all is, but until we get China and the UK to stand firmly against the US, there's not much chance to stop them.
Having Rosen rewrite the (fairly intelligent) copyright laws into a hideous mess of excessive cash-protection doesn't surprise me at all. It's perfectly in line with the stated policy of forcibly instituting US-style legislation throughout the world.
Interesting and accurate point of view. Our own DNA replication is somewhat unreliable, but also contains what is effectively a checksum.
Cosmic rays, as you imply, cause glitches. We have ECC RAM for that purpose (and many many other checks in memory systems on high-end boxes). We also have things like redundant power supplies, hot swap/fail CPUs, RAID, etc.
But unreliable software is harder to make redundant, because it's unreliable information, not pieces of hardware. Maybe we need all life-critical software to be supplied by two independent vendors, and pull data from both products simultaneously? Something.
OK from what I can see, on the IBM side it goes like this:
1) SCO licenses Unix source code to IBM, under a limited non-exclusive contract. 2) IBM incorporates that source code into their 'open source Linux' offering, violating the contract. 3) SCO sues for breach of contract.
Now on the RedHat/Suse comment, he barely implied that they would eventually have to look at those products, to see if there was any of the original Unix source code in them. If so, then they would also be targets.
I don't CARE if IBM gave their code to the happy happy open source world. If they violated the terms of their license with SCO, then SCO has NO CHOICE but to sue them, or their IP ownership becomes forfeit. As he said, they're in defense mode.
Now if RedHat follows the true Linux model of using completely ground-up from-scratch code to emulate or imitate Unix, then let SCO make as much noise as they want. There's no harm, except to themselves. On the other hand, if RedHat turns out to have some of SCO's source in their own, then they've stolen it either directly or indirectly. (Note that 'unrelated parallel engineering' or whatever it's called is a possible defense, but that's a long and arduous legal process--not really for discussion here)
So what's the problem again? Keep your nose clean, and they'll burn out. Screw up, and pay the consequences.
Yes, yes, yes! Exactly the point I was going to make!
It's an enabling tool. It supports...stuff. Some of that stuff could be terrorism. Some could be government criminal-tracking programs. Some of it could be child porn, some of it could be child porn filters. It's enabling. It's a tool. It's not a Terrorist Ploy.
Slashdot Mirror
While I agree that this has gone on way too long, Why should Kremen lose? What did he do, other than get robbed?
NetSol should be liable, and Cohen should be hanged. Kremen seems pretty much the victim in all of this.
Oh my god, that's funny. That's really funny! And to think that I haven't seen it until now!
(no, this isn't sarcasm--I just about fried my monitor with the coffee spray)
Let's toss Cohen back in jail, this time for life. Repeat offender, no remorse, no sense of responsibility, nothing but a financial danger to society.
I'm all for reform as much as possible, but this guy is just a dirtball who has had too many second chances already.
"After throwing around that piece of shit sound bite about "hiring known criminals" the same customer goes out into the parking lot and smokes a joint."
You're missing two important points here.
1) The connection between the crime in question and the job in question. You're hiring a convicted criminal computer hacker to work as a computer security professional! Would I hire someone with a 'pot posession' record to work as a computer geek? Sure. Would I hire them to be on the drug squad? No! Would I hire a reformed hacker to work on the drug squad? Quite possibly. If they have a criminal record that directly ties to the work in question, then they're probably not the best person to hire. Remember that hiring is bringing on (1)a set of skills, (2)a personality, and (3)a degree of liability. If the liability is too high, or the personality is a terrible fit, it doesn't much matter how good the skillset is.
Secondly, it's the employer's choice, within the confines of the law. If they decide to limit their liability at the risk of potentially limiting their skillset, that's their choice. If they want to have the best skills in the known universe, and hiring people with a directly relevant police record is how they do it, then the increased liability risk is also their choice.
Hmm. Interesting. I can appreciate the call to arms then--if Taylor is misrepresenting the community, then the community can rise up and pull him down.
However, that's not what Bruce has done here--he's trying to take this guy out by himself, because he (bruce) is a "better" leader. There should be no better or worse leaders in an anarchic system--only ones that the people do or don't accept.
Or in other words, Bruce is the pot, Taylor is the kettle.
Also, there's a problem with ANY form of political freedom which is more evident in anarchy--people are easily swayed by things other than facts. Bruce is working hard at using that to his advantage as a rallying cry.
I've read a lot of comments here, with some interesting points, excuses, or disagreements on the premise that OSS doesn't support standards.
/bin/sh. WHY???!!!!
/bin/sh-like shell that I can't `echo "hi!"` in????
:-), consider my question closely. sh, ksh, zsh, ash, and every other shell that uses sh syntax (i.e. not the csh variants) deals with the above statement in the same way. Bash doesn't.
Bash supposedly conforms to Posix standards if you invoke it with the --posix flag. (Why it shouldn't default to posix-compliant I don't know) However, bash is not compatible with
Will someone tell me why bash is the ONLY
In case anyone things I'm just ranting (I probably am ranting, but that's not all there is here
Why would OSS deliberately develop a shell (the default universal Linux shell no less) that breaks such a fundamental and long-standing de facto standard?
But this is silly. We teach people how to play chess--not just the rules, but the moves, the positions, the strategies. Why is it only intelligence on a computer's part if they can figure out how to win the game without that teaching?
Well not exactly the King of Wisconsin, but someone once declared himself Emperor of the United States, (Norton I) and it stuck. Not bad for a lunatic. :-)
"Qualified," Bruce? When the very existence of OSS is anti-formalism, how do you declare someone as "qualified" or not?
I tend to agree with you--this guy is slightly wacko. That said, he has every bit as much right to claim (regardless of the legitimacy of that claim) to be a Linux representative.
Does he represent the majority's views? No, probably not.
Does he represent his own views? Apparently so.
Is there any requirement that he represent ANYONE'S views for him to declare himself a representative, spokesman, or grand high exhalted master? Nope! It's the OSS way, I'm afraid. A grey area between direct democracy and anarchy (both in the proper political sense).
I suspect you'll have to suck it up and deal with this sort of thing as it arises. When there's no qualifying process, there's no restrictions on who can declare themselves qualified.
OK, a random comment in another post got me to
thinking. Keep in mind that I'm not much of a chess player, nor much up on chess programming. (but I used to play Go decently)
What if we implemented extensive sorting algorithms in a chess computer? Start by picking the two most recently moved pieces (each side's most recent, that is) and getting rid of all moves that don't pertain to that situation. Then consider the next most important pieces (perhaps looking at a three move history?) and further winnow the possible moves down to maybe a dozen or so. Then read not a thousand or ten thousand situations, but a dozen for one move, and then repeat. Maybe apply a scoring system to see if we move further ahead than behind, and toss out more situations.
We might end up with a computer that spent more of its time sorting than calculating, but only had to play through a hundred moves total in five or ten positions. This strikes me as being much closer to how humans view a game. Would we call it intelligent?
That's exactly what I was thinking as I read through it. If all of the above statements were true, then the human would be playing completely randomly (with no memory, no library of stored openings or endgames, etc.). Silliness.
The only thing that makes humans more 'intelligent' players is the long and short term sorting algorithms we've compiled in our brains. We know what routes to not bother with.
Geez, I seem to have touched a nerve. Glad to hear that a few others got hooked as well as I did.
I played two of the Gabriel Knight games, and like 'em quite well, but occasionally was frustrated with the blotches of stupidity in the story. I thought that the Tex Murphy games were more fun.
But there are two newer ones that everyone should check out: The Longest Journey (a few years old now, but fairly recent) and Syberia (quite new). Both from Europe, both less of the 'adventure' style and more of the 'interactive story.'
The genre ain't quite dead yet folks.
Not NEARLY that simple.
The world's oil and gas data (seismic, geological, geothermal) runs on Sun. Global financials? Yeah, they run on IBM. "Huge data stores?" They run on any and everything.
Besides, the truly monster mainframe world is diminishing more and more. It's going to be a while before it disappears forever (if it does--I'm not about to predict the death of the mainframe), but a company that lives exclusively in that domain and mindset is NOT a company to lead the other 95+% of the market.
Before Zork, there was Adventure and Haunted House. With no idea about what an adventure game was let alone what do do with it, My best friend, my dad, and I started typing words at random into this program we'd loaded from data cassette on the Commodore Pet we'd borrowed from the University.
A quarter century and a chemistry(?!) degree later, I'm doing sysadmin work and relearning the fun of programming that was ignited by that Pet, and by seeing just how complex computer games could be.
I've never cared about characters half as much as in that game. About once every six months, I replay the game just like rereading a favorite book. It's inspired me to go out and read up on Mexican religion and mythology.
The Tex Murphy games (Under a Killing Moon, etc.) were in the same category, although not quite so honest as GF.
Well not a countdown. Just a list.
1) DOOM. Nightmares after playing it for 11 hour straight, the day the shareware images were first released. The dark images, the flickering lights in the station, the SOUNDS!
2) DOOM II. Driving out of town for a holiday in the mountains, I saw a sign advertising a "Sale today on chainsaws!" Instantly I thought, "Damn, I've been looking for a chainsaw for days. Should I..." and then realised that I'd been looking for a chainsaw in the game.
3) System Shock. The updated original, on CD, with voices. Shodan was NEVER so scary! Oh man, the nights I lay awake, wired on adrenaline and fear. That changed my life, because it nearly cost me my job.
4) Grim Fandango. Never have I been so wrapped up in the characters in a game. Never. Ever. I just about cried in at least three different spots.
Correction: Sun is the second most serious threat to IBM dominance. All of the points you make are true, and in fact scaling up to the mainframe (Sun's model) may be a much more viable technological (and even business) model than scaling down from the mainframe (IBM's method). Consider that Solaris on an E15k domain is pretty much the same as Solaris on a Sparc10, which is similar to any other Unix out there. However AIX is neither similar to other Unices, nor much like OS/390. Sun has the potential to do great damage to IBM, if they survive.
HOWEVER, I still say that Sun is only the SECOND biggest threat. Who then--Microsoft? Nope.
IBM's biggest danger is IBM. They STILL believe to an unhealthy degree that they're the Only Shop In Town, and that The Market Will Follow Their Lead. They don't yet (!!!!!!) understand that the market has already just about written them off, desktops are commodity items, service in the mid- to high-end range can come from ANYWHERE, and that they'll have to be the BEST offering out there to get anyone's business.
That said, I still think that IBM is the most likely company to buy Sun. Sadly.
Just a minor nit here. Solaris is "not as stable" as *BSD according to Netcraft, by a measure of uptime.
Solaris tends to be deployed in HIGH end shops, where formal and strict change management takes place. This means scheduled patching, reboots, and controlled downtime. Ironically, proper maintenance leads to shorter uptimes on individual boxes.
Not to denigrate *BSD here--anyone who was around in the SunOS days has to have a warm spot for a pure BSD OS. Furthermore, *BSD may in fact be more stable (OpenBSD especially, I'd wager) than Solaris, but web uptime isn't the way to measure it.
Interesting point, but many issues are left open.
/., companies tend to take such things VERY seriously when they're talking to a judge.
First is the one that people have already pointed out: The released binary is a de facto checksum of the source code. If the code compiles to be identical to the binaries they released years ago, then the source is unchanged.
Then there's the fact that SCO did release the source code--to companies (like IBM) willing to pay for a license and sign an NDA. There are several copies of it floating around out there.
Then there's the question of honesty. It's one thing to lie to the public. It's another thing to perjure yourself (or your company) in court. I imagine SCO has signed (somehow) copies of their source code saying in effect, "this is an official copy of our trade secret code as of such-and-such a date." These are legal documents, and much as we might like to think otherwise on
Fundamentally, this is exactly the same as any other copyright/trade secret claim. Biotech companies rely on their researchers' signed and dated notebooks to prove their work (or prior art).
As far as your LoC idea, it's another breakable step--people are bribable, plants can get hired to destroy/alter records, etc. etc. It's an onerous step that's not going to help any honest companies, nor stop any companies truly dedicated to evil. It just causes more beaurocracy.
Interesting.
I have to admit, I can't claim to have watched too many episodes of Enterprise. After the first few very promising ones, it seemed to degenerate into a cowboy show--a REALLY TRITE cowboy show that took itself too seriously. It may have improved, but every time I turn it on I see a lot of the same stuff. It just doesn't hold my interest.
TNG started out Bad, in my opinion. Then it sort of came together around the second season (after they turfed Wesley and the helpless security twit). Then it fell apart completely. The reason? Too much preaching, too much self-importance. They (the writers) took themselves SOOOOOOO seriously, and we ended up with space-opera dreck.
Why can't anyone make shows that are creative? We've got ideas from 35 years ago that haven't been properly explored in a Trek-context yet. How did the prime directive come about? What sort of tension led to the different (warring or not) factions in the Trek universe? In other words, WHERE ARE THE STORIES?
Not to criticise your opinion--we don't have to agree at all--but I just don't see why the show is being written anymore.
Heh. At least I posted under my own id. :-)
Honestly, you're right. It's a cheap shot, and uncalled for. However, it's also a pretty common nickname for him, and definitely one of the most polite ones I know of.
Besides, what else can you call the man? My god, have you seen how many people have died in Iraq since the US invaded and took over? That's not including the 13 slaughtered today in a protest. Bush is hell-bent on world conquest and slaughter of the infidels. How can you look at him objectively and not call him a warmonger?
I have to confess--I didn't expect the US would move quite so blatantly or aggressively to recreate the middle-east as an American colony. Then again, I hadn't read the "Blueprint for a New American Century" yet. Scary shit, maynard.
I honestly believe that Blair figured he could direct and rein-in George "Warmonger" Bush a bit, and would be seen as a hero. Now he's in it up to his neck, and there's nowhere to shovel but deeper.
Nonetheless, the US government has clearly stated that its goal is to implement regime change in the middle-east as a means of extending their sphere of influence. They aren't even pretending to "liberate" anyone, except when talking to the press (which in the US at least, seems to lap it up uncritically). The rest of the world sees just how hypocritical it all is, but until we get China and the UK to stand firmly against the US, there's not much chance to stop them.
Having Rosen rewrite the (fairly intelligent) copyright laws into a hideous mess of excessive cash-protection doesn't surprise me at all. It's perfectly in line with the stated policy of forcibly instituting US-style legislation throughout the world.
Interesting and accurate point of view. Our own DNA replication is somewhat unreliable, but also contains what is effectively a checksum.
Cosmic rays, as you imply, cause glitches. We have ECC RAM for that purpose (and many many other checks in memory systems on high-end boxes). We also have things like redundant power supplies, hot swap/fail CPUs, RAID, etc.
But unreliable software is harder to make redundant, because it's unreliable information, not pieces of hardware. Maybe we need all life-critical software to be supplied by two independent vendors, and pull data from both products simultaneously? Something.
Clearly though, we need to figure it.
OK from what I can see, on the IBM side it goes like this:
1) SCO licenses Unix source code to IBM, under a limited non-exclusive contract.
2) IBM incorporates that source code into their 'open source Linux' offering, violating the contract.
3) SCO sues for breach of contract.
Now on the RedHat/Suse comment, he barely implied that they would eventually have to look at those products, to see if there was any of the original Unix source code in them. If so, then they would also be targets.
I don't CARE if IBM gave their code to the happy happy open source world. If they violated the terms of their license with SCO, then SCO has NO CHOICE but to sue them, or their IP ownership becomes forfeit. As he said, they're in defense mode.
Now if RedHat follows the true Linux model of using completely ground-up from-scratch code to emulate or imitate Unix, then let SCO make as much noise as they want. There's no harm, except to themselves. On the other hand, if RedHat turns out to have some of SCO's source in their own, then they've stolen it either directly or indirectly. (Note that 'unrelated parallel engineering' or whatever it's called is a possible defense, but that's a long and arduous legal process--not really for discussion here)
So what's the problem again? Keep your nose clean, and they'll burn out. Screw up, and pay the consequences.
Yes, yes, yes! Exactly the point I was going to make!
It's an enabling tool. It supports...stuff. Some of that stuff could be terrorism. Some could be government criminal-tracking programs. Some of it could be child porn, some of it could be child porn filters. It's enabling. It's a tool. It's not a Terrorist Ploy.
Sheesh. Some governments.